Sunday, July 13, 2008

Caramelized Onion Bread

Bread certainly is a miraculous food- powdery flour and plain ol' water coming together in a fluffy loaf with the help of millions of little bugs called Baker's yeast. Or our Indian breads- where you don't even need yeast. Just experienced hands that know how to turn out perfect flatbreads. In this recipe, Nic built in tremendous flavor right into the bread with the help of some beautiful browned onions. I halved the recipe to make a loaf of bread in a standard loaf pan, and used a mixture of bread flour and white whole wheat flour. Other than these two small variations, I followed Nic's recipe exactly.

This bread was delicious! Next time, I would make sure that I cook the onions thoroughly...this time, the water left behind in the cooked onions turned into little pockets of pasty dough in the bread. It still tasted wonderful.

I sandwiched thick slices of this bread with some cheese, popped the sandwiches into the toaster oven for just a few minutes to let the cheese melt a little, and served them with chilled tomato soup (tomato puree, flavored olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, fresh basil, salt, pepper)

Browned onions have saved many a day in my kitchen. With no other vegetables on hand, pantry onions can be browned and used in so many ways- as a stuffing for grilled cheese or quesadillas, to dress up a simple pulao into a special meal, to add to vegetable stock to make a quick soup, and so on and on. Barbara has a very detailed tutorial on browning onions so as to coax the maximum flavor from them without turning them into charcoal.

This is yet another entry for MBP: Less is More.If you post an entry for this event, please don't forget to drop me an e-mail telling me about it!

21 comments:

I remember that recipe from Nicole's blog. I came across it just last week when I was looking for something else!:)Cheese sandwiches with tomato soup- nice! I'm not one for cold soups but this one sounds so good with the garlic and fresh basil.:DWhat's the olive oil flavored with?

Lovely bread! I love caramelized onions to the point that I usually finish them up while cooking them and a measly few get in to the Pulao. Never tried chilled tomato soup. The combination of ingredients sounds refreshing!

Yum - must try! When I was growing up my mom would often buy "onion rolls" - they were soft rolls that were a little sweet and had lots of onions on top and inside. They made for really wonderful sandwiches.

TBC, Like you, I am not too fond of cold soups either, but that evening, it was sweltering and this cold tomato soup tasted fantastic :) The olive oil is infused with blood oranges...I put in a link to it once I read your comment.